Sweet Catastrophe

Kids say the greatest stuff at Lowe’s. Last week there was a little boy right inside the entrance letting his parents know with a passion only 4 year olds can muster, “I HATE this plaaaaaaace.” I feel ya kid. The little girl in the bathroom today was adorable. Her mother was telling her not to walk out the door without her, “I know ’cause there’s strangers will steal me.” How cute?

So everyone (particularly Jamey) has trouble understanding why we all hate the front-end so much and so many people are so desperate to get away. Working the front end of any retail operation is like being back in high school. Everyone knows everyone else’s business…whether it’s true or not. Drama is as common as the customer who complains about a line, only to take ten minutes arranging her checkbook when it’s her turn to check out. I can handle that. I’ve been doing retail since I was 16ish. I’m totally used to that. The thing is, when you add that to working at a location where customer service is key, but the slack is so obviously taken up in the way the employees are treated, that’s when it just gets to be too much. I really can’t even express all the common practices in that store that really shouldn’t be going on at all. When I started the job, no, I didn’t like all my superiors, but there were none I had a problem working with. Now, there’s only one who doesn’t inspire feelings of…oh maybe jumping in front of a train.

Oh and let’s talk about scheduling again. Since my availability has changed (read: been changed for me), I now have the wonderful privilege of opening next Tuesday morning at 6am. Now, according to my school schedule that they have on file, that would mean that basically from 9am Monday morning to 10pm Wednesday night, I’d be in either class or work. It would go as follows:
Monday = Class 9am-3:15pm
Work 4pm-10pm
Tuesday = Work 6am-1pm
Class 2pm-4pm
Wednesday = Class 9am-3:15pm
Work 4pm-10pm

No ma’am. I’m gonna try to catch Peggy (the one who actually makes out my schedule) within the next few days to discuss it. If she really can’t do without me, I’ll take it next week, but after that, I’m done. I want my original availability back. I won’t repeat all my complaints about the availability, but the point is that I know my limits, and I know what my schedule needs to be to ensure that I’m actually going to show up to all my classes and all my scheduled shifts and actually do all my homework. That schedule ain’t gonna cut it.

Things got tight starting this weekend because 1 cashier up and quit Thursday (wish I could afford to do that), and 2 officially moved to other departments, but of course the schedule wasn’t changed around to account for those people. We also had an unusually large number of call outs this weekend too. Why didn’t anyone warn me that no one was gonna be there so I could be one of those missing folks as well? So we have those three who have shifts that aren’t gonna be covered for about 3 weeks, well, today we added 3 more bodies to that list—here’s the fun stuff, ready for it?

TWO cashiers were carried out in handcuffs today for stealing merchandise. Another was fired for aiding them. A little vague, but at the moment that’s all the info I have. The two caught stealing don’t really surprise me that much, but the one supposedly aiding them really bothers me. I’m generally a really good judge of character but I really never would’ve expected this from this person. I guess you just never really know.

So that’s 6 cashiers we’re gonna have to pick up slack for in the upcoming weeks. It’s gonna be rough, and it probably means I can’t expect to get out of work on time for a while. Hoorah….thank God I’m off the next three days.

Oh! On a good note, it appears I was approved for my time off during Spring Break after all. I won’t know for sure for a few days, but we found my request today and it had been signed off on. I’ve never actually taken a Spring Break off so it’ll be nice. Unfortunately, I had already been told I wasn’t getting it off so I haven’t been doing anything to save up money so I don’t really know what I’m gonna be able to afford to do and I don’t know how bills are gonna go for the end of March/beginning of April. Wish me luck….